CTS Blog and Articles

The endurance athlete's source for information on training, nutrition, motivation, strategy, and more.

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The 6 Keys to Great Training and Big Improvements

7 Keys to Take Your Group Ride from Good to Great

We’re in the home stretch of the 2015 Amgen Tour of California Race Experience and I am incredibly proud of the athletes and staff we have at this event. The course this year has been difficult. The first five stages were each quite long (100-125 miles) and featured lots of wind, and on Stage…

Posted: May 15, 2015

Author: CTS

I love cycling and I love really good food, so there’s perhaps nothing I enjoy more than an opportunity to combine the two. It’s been great getting to know chef and restaurateur Matthewhew Accarrino because he is so passionate about both food and sport, and his food is incredible! Matthew is the chef at…

Posted: May 8, 2015

Author: CTS

3 Steps and Exercises to Get More Aero Without Any New Equipment

Magazines are filled with dozens of pages describing and featuring slippery bikes, sleek helmets, and all manner of wheels and apparel. All of that stuff is great and shows the intense level of innovation that cycling and triathlon benefits from. But those things won’t make you faster if you’re still sitting upright like a…

Posted: May 6, 2015

Author: CTS

Ginger Runner Podcast with CTS Coach Jason Koop

CTS Premier Coach Jason Koop is one of the top coaches in the sport of ultrarunning and whether your goal is to run 10kms or 100 miles, you should watch this Ginger Runner Podcast with Ethan Newberry. Jason provides great training information about structuring workouts, planning a competitive season, getting through your first ultra, and…

Posted: May 5, 2015

Author: CTS

Which is Better: Pedaling More or Pedaling Less?

If you want to go faster, should you pedal more or pedal less? It may seem like a trick question, but really it’s not. Conventional wisdom would say that pedaling more yields more power and that makes you go faster. But pedaling more also burns more energy, which can leave you without the necessary…

Posted: May 1, 2015

Author: CTS

When we heard about the terrible earthquake in Nepal, our thoughts went first to the affected cities and towns, and also to the climbers who on various mountains – including Mount Everest. Among the thousands of foreigners in Nepal during the earthquake was CTS Athlete Marty Coleman, who is coached by Geoff Hanson. Just…

Posted: April 29, 2015

Author: CTS

This week the mainstream media waded into a long-running debate about the relative impacts of calories and exercise on obesity and, by cherry-picking one editorial out of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, declared: “You can’t outrun obesity!” The original editorial, and similar pieces, make some good points, but as several experts smarter than…

Posted: April 24, 2015

Author: CTS

Climb Any Hill Faster with These 3 Workouts

We have yet to meet a cyclist or triathlete who doesn’t want to go uphill faster, but not all hills are created equal. Rolling hills aren’t very long but they often come one right after the other and can add up to a surprising amount of elevation gain. Sustained climbs take patience and power,…

Posted: April 22, 2015

Author: CTS

Which is Better: Two Shorter Rides or One Really Long Ride?

We received a great question in response to a recent blog post and I thought the answer would make a good post for everyone. Here’s the question: “Would it be preferable to ride 6 hours in one day with a day off following, or 2 days back to back for 3 hours? Obviously a…

Posted: April 17, 2015

Author: CTS

This Simple Change to Your Training Week Yields Big Improvements!

By Chris Carmichael One of the most common training schedules for amateur cyclists is the 4-day Tues/Thurs/Sat/Sun plan. It’s a great plan for a couple reasons: four workouts a week provides enough consistency to keep you moving forward, you can generate enough weekly workload to see continued improvement, and there are three rest/recovery days…